Jewish Military Union

[5] Initially consisting of only 39 men, each armed only with a Polish Vis 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, with time it had grown to become one of the most numerous and most notable Jewish resistance organizations in Poland.

Although initially formed entirely by professional soldiers, with time it also included members of pre-war right wing Jewish-Polish parties such as Betar (among them Perec Lasker, Lowa Swerin, Paweł Frenkiel, Merediks, Langleben and Rosenfeld), Hatzohar (Joel Białobrow, Dawid Wdowiński) (Political Chair), and the Revisionist faction of the Polish Zionist Party (Leon Rodal and Meir Klingbeil).

In the later period the ŻZW focused on acquisition of arms for the future struggle as well as on helping the Jews to escape the ghettos, created in almost every town in German-held Poland.

Thanks to the close ties with the Związek Walki Zbrojnej and then the AK (mainly through Iwański's Security Corps, the Polish underground police force), the ŻZW received a large number of guns and armaments, as well as training of their members by professional officers.

When most of the Jewish inhabitants were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, the ŻZW remained in contact with the outside world through Iwański and a number of other officers on the Aryan side.

Although Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum could not convince Adam Czerniaków to start an armed uprising against the Germans during the deportation, the organization managed to preserve most of its members - and assets.

[12] This was even strengthened by the post-war propaganda of the Polish communists, who openly underlined the value of the leftist Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, while suppressing all publications on the Armia Krajowa-backed ŻZW.

A means of identification, used in particular during meetings of higher level officers, were two identical gold rings set with a red stone engraved with Jewish symbols.

[13] In recent years, new research has been published on the ŻZW which has called into question the validity of some accounts, especially by Henryk Iwanski, which had influenced Maciej Kledzik, Marian Apfelbaum, Stefan Bratkowski and Moshe Arens and uncritically transmitted by many of those who wrote about the revolt and which later found their way into many secondary sources.

The research of a Polish-Israeli team, for example, has raised many doubts around the veracity of testimony and memoirs by Henryk Iwański, Kalman Mendelson, Tadeusz Bednarczyk, Jack Eisner, David J. Landau, Maurice Shainberg, Joseph Greenblatt and a number of others.

[14] Moreover, they have suggested that Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum may actually have been an entirely fictitious figure and that the contact ring, the most emblematic relic of the Revisionist group, is in all likelihood a forgery.